Some people might hear the word ‘sticker’ and instantly dismiss the idea as a pointless novelty – something children use to decorate their schoolbooks or ruin the fridge. What they don’t realise is that these ‘silly little trinkets’ are profit-generating wonders.
It’s not an exaggeration to say that having a sticker printing machine is effectively having the ability to print your own money. Keep reading to find some ideas for making money with sticker printing.
Selling Branded Logo Stickers
Working with another company’s artwork reduces the amount of time and money you need to spend creating designs from scratch. Often, all you will need to do is add cut lines in your design software or in your RIP, if it has this capability.
The important thing is to ensure you can reproduce your clients’ brand colours. In most cases, you can get close with CMYK, but if you want to secure regular jobs from bigger brands, you should consider increasing your colour gamut by adding additional colours to your ink configuration.
Selling Wall Stickers for the Home
The B2C market is filled with opportunities to make money with sticker printing. One such popular product is large wall stickers, usually sold to decorate children’s bedrooms or nurseries.
If you plan to branch into this market, it pays to test different adhesive media to find one which is easy to apply and will stay in place without peeling off, but which won’t damage the wall when it eventually is removed.
You might also want to consider producing a printed installation guide for your customers so they can apply the stickers without any issues.
Selling Vehicle Stickers
Whether you’re selling to businesses or individuals, there are several opportunities to sell vehicle stickers. Bumper stickers are great promotional tools for small businesses and they’re small enough to be applied on most vehicles.
You can also produce larger branded stickers or lettering for local businesses. In this case, you will need to work with your clients to discern where the sticker needs to go, how much space is required and whether you’re working with a flat or irregular surface.
At a certain point, a simple vehicle sticker can become a partial wrap, in which case you’ll likely need the skills to apply the sticker yourself. Though this is more complex and more manual, vehicle wrapping is also very lucrative and a great skill to have in your arsenal.
Including Free Stickers with Other Orders
If you don’t think you’re selling enough stickers, it could be because your customers don’t know you sell them. While printing other products, you’ll often end up with blank spaces in the vinyl which would otherwise go in the bin.
Instead of wasting this material, fill the space with your client’s logo and include these logo stickers with the main order as a freebie. Now your customer knows that this is a service you offer, and they’re impressed that they have received a free gift.
Monetising Your Graphic Design
In any profession involving visual media or graphics, it’s common to collect folders full of unused drafts, miscellaneous concepts and designs which, for one reason or another, never went into production. Instead of gathering virtual dust in the dark corners of your drives, make these assets work for you by turning them into stickers.
You’ll probably find that it only takes a few minor tweaks to turn half-finished designs into sellable stickers. You can sell those on online selling platforms like Etsy, add them to your own website or just sell them in the real world.
Providing Unique Special Effects
In any business, it’s important to offer something different which distinguishes you from your competitors. When it comes to stickers, everyone is used to seeing designs and logos printed onto gloss white adhesive vinyl.
If you have a high-opacity white ink in your ink configuration, try experimenting with other substrates like holographic vinyl or metallic vinyl. Or, if you’re lucky enough to have a UV printer/cutter, you can embellish your designs with spot gloss ink, letting you add glossy highlights, embossed text or even simulated textures like wood grain or leather.
Selling Printed Braille Signage Stickers
Again, if you have a UV printer/cutter with a gloss ink channel, you can offer something which would otherwise cost a lot to produce. Braille signage is essential for most public buildings or on public transport.
Usually, signage companies need to work with third-party specialists to add printed Braille details to the finished article. With gloss UV ink, you can easily print layers of clear ink to build up a raised texture without even having to remove the media from your printer.
Offering a Personalised Sticker Service
Most print providers are perfectly capable of producing personalised stickers, but they might not think of highlighting this as a service.
Personalisation is big business and thousands of companies are thriving simply by printing custom details onto otherwise inexpensive items and selling them to customers who are more than happy to pay for these unique products.
You can charge a premium for individually customised stickers using your customers’ own photos or even just their names. VersaWorks’ ‘Variable Data’ function can make this process simple and profitable.
Covering All Holidays and Occasions
No matter what happens to the economy or to the world at large, people will continue to have birthdays, get married or celebrate anniversaries and seasonal holidays.
Every holiday or event is an opportunity to sell stickers, whether they are printed snowflakes for dressing a window in the winter, or a ‘just married’ sticker for the rear window of the wedding car.
Covering All Professions and Jobs
Like the above, you can increase your customer base by simply offering something they’re looking for but might not be able to find elsewhere. It might be easy enough to find a ‘world’s best teacher’ sticker, but it’s probably harder to find ‘world’s best physics teacher’ or ‘Rome’s best English teacher’.
Or think about your local bakery or coffee shop – they likely use stickers on their product packaging, or blank labels on which to write the cake of the week. You’ll be surprised how many professions have a need for stickers once you start researching.
Conclusion
Those are just a few ideas for making your sticker-printing machine into a profit-generation machine, but the world of stickers is much bigger and you’re sure to find countless other opportunities just by looking around.
If you’re looking for a sticker printer which can stand up to a real, professional workload, talk to a Roland DG expert and they’ll be happy to talk you through your options.